23-0102P_HIS PERFECT STRENGTH

Rom 4:1  What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? 

Rom 4:2  For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. 

Rom 4:3  For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. 

Rom 4:4  Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. 

Rom 4:5  But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. 

Heb 11:32  And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: 

Heb 11:33  Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 

Heb 11:34  Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. 

Heb 11:35  Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: 

Heb 11:36  And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: 

Heb 11:37  They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; 

Heb 11:38  (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. 

Heb 11:39  And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: 

Heb 11:40  God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. 

2Co 12:7  And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. 

2Co 12:8  For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. 

2Co 12:9  And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 

2Co 12:10  Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong. 

34 Then if I should call it a text, I’d like to use this, strength…Perfect Strength By Perfect Weakness. If we have weakness we have strength. It’s unusual text on…in a Pentecostal assembly, to make…take a text of weakness, because we’re always testifying “we’re so strong.”

    61-1119 - Perfect Strength By Perfect Weakness   Rev. William Marrion Branham

42 We try to make our weaknesses excuses. We want to tell how big we are, how great we are. I think that’s one of the things that I…God gave me the text for, was to get that out of our mind. See?

43 There’s little things that we do. And that’s what we come to church for, is to find out where our faults is, and the things that we might better ourselves by. If we come to church for any other—any other objective than this, I’m afraid we won’t get too much out of coming to church. We must come to find our weaknesses, find our bad places and our…how…see how little we are, and put our trust in Somebody that’s strong. But when we have weaknesses…

44 There’s so many of us likes to testify or likes to think that we’re insufficient and, therefore, we make that an excuse, “I have no education, I have no ability, I’m unable to do this.” And if you keep that up and do that in that way, keep going like that, then you can’t amount to anything. But the very thing that we make excuses, by our weaknesses, God uses that very thing to tackle the job with. See? He waits for us to get to that condition so that He can use us. We—we take the excuses and say, “Well, I—I—I—I’m…can’t do this, I’m insufficient. I—I can’t do it.” And God takes that very thing to do the job with. That’s true.

45 That’s the reason why that He—He chooses us, because we’re in that condition. Now, that sounds strange, but just a few minutes we’ll get to the reason of it, if God being willing.

46 We—we find out, just as we have been reading, that weaknesses and rejections…and we find out that those people who are the weakest and the rejected by the outside world, is God’s heroes, that conquer up in the front line, takes those who are—are…feel themselves unworthy.

    61-1119 - Perfect Strength By Perfect Weakness Rev. William Marrion Branham

47 There was a Methodist brother, three of them that comes to this church from up in Ohio, or northern Indiana. They said to me not long ago, said, “Brother Branham,” said, “we just received the Holy Ghost, shall we now seek for gifts for our ministry?”

I said, “Don’t do it! Let it alone.”

48 And he turned and looked at me, said, “I just read a certain brother’s book that told us after we received the Holy Ghost we ‘should seek gifts,’ for these to use this Holy Ghost.”

I said, “And become a stuffed shirt!” See?

49 If you notice in the Bible, it’s always those who are trying to get away from it, that God uses. As long as a man’s…wants to do something and thinks he’s got enough ability he can put the job over, God could never use that man. Look at Moses, running; look at Paul, running; and the rest of them, trying to get away from it.

50 I said, “Don’t seek nothing. God has got anything for you, He’ll give it to you.” See? “And just let Him—let Him take care of that.” I said, “Then you get some of these times like we got, have today, that everybody is wanting to do this and do that and become some great person. Look what we got into with it, you see.”

51 Instead of trying to be great we ought to be trying—trying to find out how little we can get. See? Then God can use us. I got several Scriptures written out here that I should be referring to, I suppose, but I…we…I probably won’t have time to do it. But we are…

52 Notice that it takes the—the weakest and the rejected, and practically every hero God ever had on the front line was that type of person. A person that was rejected, a person that thought he was insufficient, a person that had no ability at all, then that person’s just in good shape so God can start using him. That’s right. It’s when they feel like that they can’t, they haven’t got nothing, that’s when God can take a hold of them and do something with them. See? When…But when we are thinking that we are able to do it, then God can’t use us because we’re wanting to do it ourselves.

53 And, then, the other side, we get these feelings and we think then that we’re insufficient, and we don’t want to do it; but then if we just listen to the call of God, that’s the very thing that God wants us to get into, that kind of a shape, so He can.

54 When we are insufficient, ourselves, then we are subjects to yield to God’s Spirit. As long as we think that we can do it, then we can’t do it. But when we get to a place where we know we can’t do it, then we yield ourself to God and He does it. So then if it’s us trying to do it we’ll fail, but if we’ll just yield ourself to God then God can’t fail. There’s only one thing that God cannot do, and, that’s fail. He can do anything else but fail. But He cannot fail.

55 So as long as we are trying in ourselves and depending on our own abilities, and so forth, well, we’ll do nothing. But when we get to a place where we know we’re nothing, then God can use us.

56 The important thing, one of the important things that we must master…Now remember this, and especially you young preachers, and lay members alike. There’s one thing that we’ve got to master if we expect to fulfill God’s desire in our life, that is, we have to master the thought of human ability. If we ever get to a spot where we think that we can do it with our own intelligence and our own abilities, we’ve got to master that in such a way that we can get rid of the thing and lay it aside so that God can use us. That’s right.

57 And make a complete surrender! We cannot use one ability. We’ve got to make a complete surrender! And, to come to God, you’ve got to surrender to Him both soul, body, and spirit. Everything that you are has to be surrendered to God, in order that He can work His will in you and in me.

58 Now, that’s hard, I know, ’cause we’re always wanting to put our part in, something that we know, we know that we want to do it. We say, “Well, I—I just know it should be done this way.” But as long as you’re doing it that way it’s going to be wrong, and God will never use that effort. Maybe, with the help of the Lord, we’re going to get into that in a few minutes, and just show you how God cannot use your ability.

59 And that’s what’s the matter with the world today: there’s too much seminary experiences, too much placed upon education, too much placed upon relationship or fellowships in denomination, we rest on one another, we rest upon men with ability.

60 The Bible said, “How can you have faith when you—when you are…” Let’s see, how is that Scripture? “How can you have faith when you’re preferring one another?”

61 When we are expecting, saying, “This guy, he’s a great person. This is a great person, I’ll just lean upon him,” that displeases God when you do that. We must lean upon God and God alone! We mustn’t trust the ability of ourselves or any man. We must completely yield to God.

62 No ability, I don’t care whose it is, will never be usable in the sight of God. God has to get all of our abilities out of us before He can achieve His purpose. If He’s got something for us to do, and as long as we feel that we’re doing a pretty good job out of it, then we’ll never be able to be used of God.

63 Now, you say, “You’re making an awful broad statement there, Brother Branham.” And that—that is a broad one, but just look around and find out if whether it’s right or not.

64 Look around today at all of our great achievement we think we’ve done, and where is Christianity in United States? Look at all of our churches and denominations, and our evangelists and healing campaigns, and everything else we’ve had, and what is it? Worse than it ever was in the beginning! It’s worse off today than it ever was, because that we have tried to do it in human ability.

65 They gather together and make long prayers and go out here. And had the other day where they had so many, a hundred and fifty thousand, or something like that, gathered together, both Protestant and Catholic; say some prayers, and pray some prayers, and make some prayers, and so forth. That just might as well not have gathered, it’s not worth nothing in the sight of God.

66 Now, if I get critical, forgive me. See? But I—I’ve…You’ve got to drive the thing down. See? You’ve got to make it hit the nail.

67 And what good did it do? Nothing. And it’ll never be until every person that professes to be a Christian will forget his own ability and yield hisself to God.

68 Then God can achieve His purpose by sending…not a revival, but, brother, what He needs to do first is send a killing, that’s right, so we can revive. You have to die before you can be born again, and you have to…He needs a killing of ourselves. This tabernacle needs a killing, and me with it. All of us, we need a—a killing so that we can be revived in a new life, a new hold, a new hope, a new experience! We need first a day of mourning.

69 We need a place of yielding to the Spirit instead of so much depending upon schooling and upon our programs, and we…our campaigns and all that we have. We—we—we rely upon cooperation with so many different ministers to cooperate. We allow so many…“If we can’t get so many, why, we won’t do it. We won’t go to the cities without that.” And then, when we do that, we’re making it in a great big machine that’s got a carbon knock in it, see.

70 So we—we got to get away from that, that human ability. We got to get to a place where we can surrender our souls and lives, even to the housewife, to the farmer, to the mechanic, or whoever we are, we got to surrender completely to God and know that “we are nothing.” Then let God start from there. Then He starts moving, working. And that includes all of us, everyone. That’s the—the thing that we got to do.

71 History proves, does now, proves (history does) that God always chose the nobodies to become His somebodies. God takes the person that’s nothing.